An idea for a system where rpg mechanics / skills are part of the plot but not sure how to do it

[LostName]

RPG mechanics are all the rage among isekai mangas and all sorts of manhuas and manhwas these days. They can be fun but I always feel like it's kinda of cringe when you quantify everything like a video game where it's down out of necessity to tell the player what's going on rather than because it's so cool.

Normally I'd never use this because it's ultimately too cringe but I just created a setting where it actually makes a lot of sense. It has a focus on characters raiding dungeons via gates like all them popular manhwas but it's all sci fi magitech, the dungeons aren't called dungeons or anything and are virtual but real worlds created through magitech gates (e.g. like the Stargate) and deleted when everyone left but matter brought back from inside the gate-created worlds does not get deleted and is needed to support their home and keep things running.

Because they are from a civilization with highly advanced magitech (which has gone extinct a long time ago so they are in this current state) they have an in-head HUD like e.g. the Terminator but looking more like modern Windows.
And it's precisely this in-head HUD that has a focus on supporting Hunters, who used to be a part of that extinct civilization's military, which would quantify and categorize everything to make it easier to gauge progress and training and make it easier to apply learned techniques.

I'm not sure how to go about it as it would be mainly descriptive but just now I thought that it's all magitech so the in-head HUD could be linked to nano-magitech inside their body magic genetic engineering or whatever and they could actually learn skills this way but I certainly do not want to just use the generic as-is rpg mechanics everyone uses cause that's just lame.

 

[Queshire]

Well, my first advice is to learn to appreciate what you're doing. =_=

 

[Devor]

I don't mean to sound snarky or anything, but are you writing a novel or a graphic webtoon? I've seen HUDs in webtoons and anime, but I've never read a book with one, so I don't know how well it translates to text. I guess it would mean interrupting paragraphs with bracketed lines like [Your skill, SAGE, is in effect.]?

Whenever I've seen a social skill in one of these stories, they tend to be very descriptive. They get names like "acting" or "steel mentality" or "sense of justice," and they cover just about anything you'd imagine based on their names. Sometimes part of the idea is that just about everyone has one or two of these personality skills at the heart of their character.

What exactly are you asking?